McGuire had appeared at the far end of the gangway. He was shouting something, but Joe didn’t register what it was. He was too busy with the Middle Eastern guys. The closest of them was three metres away, the other three a metre behind that. They were all carrying something. Two of them had bootlaces. One had the plastic tube of a ballpoint pen, its end sanded sharp. The leader had a broken bathroom tile, fashioned into a jagged blade. He was holding it like a dagger.
The whole room had fallen silent. There wasn’t a single inmate in the dining hall who didn’t have his eyes on the violence they knew was about to happen. But Joe’s focus wasn’t on the audience. It was on the enemy, two metres away.
He opened his mouth, pulled out the razor blade and spat a gobful of blood into the face of the fucker with the bathroom tile. He knocked the tile away with his left hand, and slashed with the razor in his right. It was exquisitely sharp, and cut a gash into the left side of his assailant’s throat as if the flesh wasn’t there. Blood spurted from the wound. There was pressure behind it – so much that the dark liquid sprayed over one of Finch’s men’s food – until the guy fell to his knees, a horrific gurgling coming from the back of his mouth. It was the only noise in the suddenly silenced room. Joe felt several hundred eyes on him – not least those of Finch and his crew. Even the screws had momentarily frozen, clearly shocked by the sudden violence. But Joe’s own attention was already on his other attackers. They had stopped in their tracks as their leader went down, but their eyes still shone and Joe could tell they didn’t intend to back off. He stepped over the puddle that was leaching from the dying man and grabbed the one carrying the sharpened plastic tube. He sliced his hand, causing him automatically to drop the makeshift weapon.
Suddenly the silence erupted into a storm of chaos. Finch and one other man Joe hadn’t seen before jumped from their seats and started laying into the two remaining attackers. Within seconds they had brought them to the floor and were kicking and pummelling them. The gangway filled with inmates, some pressing towards them to see what was happening, others struggling to get away as if they were afraid to be linked with, or affected by, the violence. The hall was filled with roars of encouragement, or shrieks at other inmates to get out of the way. Joe was deaf to it all. He muscled his man to the floor half a metre from the twitching body of his comrade, grabbed his hair with his left hand and positioned the bloody razor blade millimetres from his pumping jugular.
‘OK, you piece of shit,’ he hissed. ‘Time for some fucking answers.’
The back of the guy’s head was soaked with the blood oozing from his friend, but he looked neither disgusted nor frightened. He simply grinned.
‘Who put you up to it?’ Joe slammed the guy’s head against the floor. ‘Who fucking put you up to it?’
The man spat in his face. ‘I’ll die before I tell you.’
Joe thumped the fucker’s head down again, and this time there was a cracking sound. ‘How much pain can you manage, you piece of shit?’
‘Pain is nothing to me,’ the man whispered. ‘I will be welcomed into Paradise…’
The shouting all around was getting louder. A bell started ringing and Joe heard the sound of whistles being blown. Rage surged through him. Suddenly he didn’t even care about questioning this man: he just wanted to hurt the cunt. He slashed the blade across the right side of his face, ripping a deep seam in his cheek. The pain made the guy take a sharp breath in, and as a curtain of blood drew itself across the lower part of his face, Joe heard himself spitting words at him. ‘Be my fucking guest. And say hi to your bum-chum Osama while you’re at it. He’s had a few days there – he can show you the ropes…’
The man’s eyes grew brighter. ‘Sheikh al-Mujahid?’ He made a dismissive, hissing sound. ‘He’s not dead…’
Joe blinked. Again the noise all around seemed to dissolve, even though he knew the chaos was increasing. ‘What do you mean?’ he whispered. And then, when the man didn’t reply, he roared: ‘What the fuck do you mean!’
Joe felt hands grab him from behind as the noise of the dining hall burst into his head again. The screws had him, they were shouting, and now they were pounding him with their truncheons… a blow to his stomach winded him… a second one, and then a third to the hand gripping the razor. He dropped his only weapon and covered his head as the screws started beating his already bruised and damaged body in an orgy of unrestrained brute force.
The next few minutes were a blur. His mouth still bled profusely, sharp pain splintered through him. He felt himself being pulled up to his feet and realized his clothes were sopping with the blood of the man whose throat he’d just cut. McGuire and Sowden were on the ground next to the Middle Eastern guy, covered in his blood and attempting to give him CPR, but Joe knew they were trying to resuscitate a stiff. The crowd parted as he was pulled along the gangway, surrounded by six screws screaming at everybody to get back.
He’d just killed a man, in front of hundreds of witnesses. It wouldn’t matter that it was done in self-defence. In everyone else’s eyes he was not only a murderer, but a double murderer. He might be incarcerated in the most secure prison in the country, but it hadn’t stopped his enemy getting to him.
And there were only so many attacks he could survive.
The cell Joe had shared with Hunter had been a dump, but the Segregation Wing made it look luxurious. Joe didn’t care. One cell was the same as another, and it was better to be alone than with scum like Hunter. The moment they threw him into this tiny, stinking space, where the toilet was ten times more rancid and the single mattress covered in disgusting stains, he collapsed to the floor, his back to the wall. He felt like he was saturated in blood. His own. His enemies’. Caitlin’s. He could taste it. See it. It was everywhere.
Time passed. Joe didn’t know how long. Hours. The door opened and a screw he didn’t even look at placed a tray of food inside. Breakfast. It went untouched.
All he could think about was what the Middle Eastern guy in the dining hall had said: ‘Sheikh al-Mujahid? He’s not dead…’
Would some banged-up minor terror suspect really know something like that? Or was this just another mad theory? ‘Mark my words… a double agent working for the Americans…’
Joe shook his head. He’d seen the SEALs go in. He’d seen them remove the body bag containing their target.
While it was true that the Yanks had been in bed with the Mujahideen back in the seventies – hell, even the SAS had trained up the AQ-in-making – the idea that they were working hand in hand with the leader of their sworn enemies was ridiculous.
Wasn’t it?
And it had been Arabs who had just tried to kill him. What was it – revenge? Or had it just leaked out that he was army and they wanted to have a crack at him, like Finch and the rest of the fucking Micks?
The thoughts were so all-consuming that he barely noticed the door of his cell open for the second time. He looked up. His food tray was still there on the floor. The door was only slightly ajar. Nobody else was in the cell.
Joe scrambled to his feet, eyes screwed up, fists clenched, ready to defend himself.
The door opened a little wider.
Joe saw the narrow end of an old-fashioned wooden crutch appear in the gap, followed by a limping foot.
Hennessey stared at him. There was a silence. Long. Threatening.
‘How did you get in here?’ Joe demanded.
Hennessey didn’t immediately reply. He limped into the centre of the cell and started rolling a cigarette with a heavily tattooed hand as he leaned on his crutch.